Crate digging old keyboards is fun! I’ve been recording and collecting Yamaha DJX (PSR-D1) MIDI style patterns. To my knowledge, no one has made DJX MIDI patterns available. Now, for the first time, I offer a collection of DJX MIDI songs.
As mentioned in my earlier post, I recorded the MIDI songs while playing the DJX in STYLE mode. (DJX does not transmit MIDI in SONG mode.) Each DJX song has the following structure:
Lead In | Beat A | Break AA |
| Beat A | Break AB |
| Beat B | Break BB |
| Beat B | Break BA | Beat A | Lead Out
Each song is a pretty decent representation of a DJX style. Songs are about 30 bars long, give or take, depending upon Lead In and Lead Out length.
Each song has two Type 1 MIDI files: set-up (SU) and style data (RAW). The SU files contain MIDI set-up messages to select voices, set levels, and so forth. The RAW files contain style pattern data. You would probably change or discard the set-up messages anyway, so it made sense to separate set-up from patterns.
Click this link to download the ZIP.
With 160 plus files, I organized files into subdirectories according to DJX style category: INTRODUCTION, TRIP HOP, ELECTRO, etc. Each subdirectory has a short text file with details like style name, key, and BPM. Here’s the table from the ABSTRACT category:
BPM Key/scale Notes/opinion
---------------- --- --------- ------------------------
55 Digital Rock 132 Am7 minor Rock. Phrase 3 track empty
56 Underground 130 Am7 minor Up-tempo rock beat. Phrase 3 unused
57 Chill Out 78 Bm9 minor Nice! Feels faster. 4-bar INTRO
--> All captures made in Cm
--> Loading a DJX style and pressing PLAY shows the native key/scale
The root note for all songs is “C” in order to make conversion easier. [I won’t need to keep track of original, pre-programmed key scales.] If you see an exclamation point, that style/song will get higher priority for conversion. In other words, I like its vibe.
The DJX is a bit of a weird, one-off creature. Even though it uses an XG synthesis engine, the MIDI channel/part assignments are not compatible with current Yamaha arranger keyboards. All of the DJX songs use DJX-specific drum kits (e.g., B900 kit, DJX kit, etc.) which do not follow typical XG or General MIDI note to instrument assignments.
Further, the recording process introduced time skew and you will need to correct MIDI event timing. Taken in total, the DJX songs are very raw and need significant re-work to make them usable. Read the DJX manual before working with these files. I recommend reading my earlier posts, too.
I am distributing these songs even though the collection is not complete; fourteen songs remain to be captured. For the moment, I want to focus on style conversion, that is, transforming these songs into PSR/Genos styles.
Caveats aside, have fun!
If you landed here looking for DJX-II styles and patterns, please see the following pages:
Copyright © Paul J. Drongowski